A Walk, A Fancy House, and Pinball

 Bloomington, MN

One of the Ten Thousand Lakes just down the street from us.

A Walk to Lake of the Isles

This morning we took Francis for a walk and walked in a different direction than normal.  Normally we stay inside the major streets that surround us but today we walked to Lake of the Isles.  While looking at our upcoming walk Donna found a pin on the Google Map that peaked her interest.

The Purcell-Cutts House is between us and the lake.

Donna read about The Purcell-Cutts House all morning and then we walked by it on our walk.  It's a beautiful Prairie School Style House designed by William Gray Purcell and George Grant Elmslie.  It's fancy like a Frank Lloyd Wright but in a different way.  They give tours once a month but we didn't know about it until after this month's tour.  

The walk along the lake was nice.  We saw baby Wood Ducks, Red-Winged Blackbirds, Great Blue Heron, and other birds and Donna saw a River Otter hunting baby ducks.  We will return with our binoculars so we can see more hot nature action.  

More Pinball

We didn't have anything planned for the afternoon so I took the van out and drove to Bloomington to play pinball at a new place.  I use Pinball Map and Stern Insider to find places to play.  It also lists what machines are there.  Full Tilt Tavern seemed like a good place to go.  I tried to get info on how much the machines were but I couldn't get that info so I rolled the dice and did the 18 minute drive.  Full Tilt Tavern is a giant Sports Bar /  Dave and Busters type place but with a smaller arcade.  You have to purchase a card with credits on it and then scan to play the games.  I hate this system but I did the drive so I looked at the pricing chart and chose to buy a $10 card which gives you bonus credits.

$10 for 50 credits

The Tap to Play passes

When I made my purchase I was surprised when 2 cards were spit out.  The machine sells you a $10 card and then spits out a separate card with the bonus credits. So now I have a card with 40 credits and a card with 10 credits.  This is weak sauce. A quick glance at the pinball machines tells me that 1 play is 7.5 credits and 3 plays is 15 credits.  When they do this you can never use all of your credits "cleanly" and have cards with random unusable credits.  So the machines were more expensive than normal and I couldn't use all oft he credits I paid for.  Luckily I found an Avengers: Infinity Quest machine with 4 credits on it so that made me feel better.  There was also a young couple playing pinball and they were paying for 2 games and getting 3 games and not using their 3rd game.  I only figured this out after they left or I would have told them.  I ended up playing their leftover single games on a few machines so I did get what I thought was a fair amount of play for my money but it was due to strange circumstances.  The machines were in good repair so that was good.

The Minnesota Skies even make buildings like this look cool.

Full Tilt was packed with giant arcade machines and VR

As well as Pinball.

Some crazy sit down Space Invaders game.  The display looked way cooler in person.  My camera's timing didn't pick up the full display.

Here is my stuck ball in Avengers: Infinity Quest.  It hopped the lane and ended up stuck behind some ramp elements out of bounds.  I had to tilt it to get it out.

That's it for today.  Today is more text than photos.  If you want photos check out Rice County Fair.  We found an all the milk you can drink deal.